Section 2

2. First, then, let us examine those good qualities by which we
hold Likeness comes, and seek to establish what is this thing which,
as we possess it, in transcription, is virtue but as the Supreme
possesses it, is in the nature of an exemplar or archetype and is
not virtue.

We must first distinguish two modes of Likeness.

There is the likeness demanding an identical nature in
the objects
which, further, must draw their likeness from a common principle:
and there is the case in which B resembles A, but A is a Primal, not
concerned about B and not said to resemble B. In this second case,
likeness is understood in a distinct sense: we no longer look for
identity of nature, but, on the contrary, for divergence since the
likeness has come about by the mode of difference.

What, then, precisely is Virtue, collectively and in the
particular? The clearer method will be to begin with the particular,
for so the common element by which all the forms hold the
general name
will readily appear.

The Civic Virtues, on which we have touched above, are a
principle
or order and beauty in us as long as we remain passing our life
here: they ennoble us by setting bound and measure to our desires
and to our entire sensibility, and dispelling false judgement- and
this by sheer efficacy of the better, by the very setting of the
bounds, by the fact that the measured is lifted outside of the
sphere of the unmeasured and lawless.

And, further, these Civic Virtues- measured and ordered
themselves
and acting as a principle of measure to the Soul which is as
Matter to
their forming- are like to the measure reigning in the
over-world, and
they carry a trace of that Highest Good in the Supreme; for, while
utter measurelessness is brute Matter and wholly outside of
Likeness, any participation in Ideal-Form produces some
corresponding degree of Likeness to the formless Being There. And
participation goes by nearness: the Soul nearer than the body,
therefore closer akin, participates more fully and shows a godlike
presence, almost cheating us into the delusion that in the
Soul we see
God entire.